The Last Time I Saw Paris

July 9, 2001
Lara Lewis, the befuddled protagonist of this coming-of-middle-age novel, is a curvy, knockout 45-year-old, unaware of her beauty. All she notices is her aging, not her assets, and it doesn't help that her snooty doctor husband, Bill, is probably having an affair with his pert, younger blonde colleague. He blows off a planned second honeymoon in Paris to go to China with Melissa, ostensibly on a medical mission. Devastated, Lara goes to their beach house to think. While there, she discovers repairs that need to be done and calls contractor Dan, who turns out to be a 32-year-old Adonis who appreciates her just as she is. As repairs continue, they get acquainted and find a mutual unspoken attraction hovering between them. When that passion is acted upon, Lara feels she's found something that has always been missing in her life, and with the concerned blessings of her friends, decides to ask Dan to go on the Paris trip, but doesn't tell him it was to be her second honeymoon. The whole trip reminds her of her time there with Bill, but the passage of time dispels the gold-tinted lie she'd believed in—it seems that Bill was always a jerk, and she was just too young and starry-eyed to see it. But will she let her history with her husband, the father of her children, keep her from dumping the fool for someone who loves and values her? The popular Adler (In a Heartbeat; All or Nothing) gets the dynamics of a new relationship pitch-perfect, even if her heroine seems too naïve to be true and her hero too perfect. But it's the detailed, realistic description of the trip to France—airline delays and hotel reservation mishaps included—that makes her latest great vicarious vacation reading.